Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! North Americans

To the Astoria in Charing Cross Road, London Village (a week ago this Thursday) to see LCD Soundsystem, as previewed breathlessly in the last post. A charmingly scuffed venue, the sort of thing ripe for getting bought by Carling and turned into a boozeodrome... and perhaps ruined, which would still be an improvement on just getting shut and replaced with more retail outlets - which you can find out about here...

So that's the venue... inside, we were felt up by security before finally getting in to the hall in a state of great anticipation for the gig. First, though, we had to endure Prinzhorn Dance School. They were like an early pre-song version of Talking Heads, all Joy Division colour scheme with occasional leggy and knock-kneed lass bass player shouting... super-earnest mainly grooveless songs that dragged themselves forward in the mud as comments sniped in from all around our party: 'Is this Christopher Eccleston's serious music side-project?' 'I look forward to the album with Eno,' 'Shall I shout 'Play Love will tear us apart'?' 'Several days later...' A friend mimes the singer hanging himself as I mime putting on 'The Idiot'. Interminable.

Mercifully, LCD Soundsystem were superb. They started with a three week frug-out version of 'Us v them', and then Daft Punk were playing... the unison Blockbuster-esque howls on 'North American Scum' so startling and intense... you forget sometimes, observed one of the circle who had not seen them previously, listening to the albums, that this is a band, an incredible band, in the six people grooving brilliantly on stage sense. The crowd was full of excitement. J disappeared forward to join the milling at the front and reemerged afterwards flushed and actually speechless with the experience. She signed 'a.ma.zing' while pointing distractedly about.

This was a gig which relit my fire, eyes on the band as I squeezed back from the bar through the crowd which was grumpily shoehorned in as 'Tribulations' rocked aptly in the foreground. Some knots of people irritably calling for 'losing my edge', but times move on - one teasing blast of the drum sample elicited a gasp of excited recognition, but the keyboard player quickly stabbed off the machine with a finger. A dynamic and forward looking band, for all the references to bygone musical mileposts the hip priests of Pitchfork can delineate... first encore 'Someone great' was already in my top tunes of the year CD mix, the live version can go on the bonus disk. Fanzines were plotted, band adverts put up: we heart LCD Soundsystem.

'Saved, for the moment.'

More cowbell!
(Photo by crispin hearn, pinched off the LCD website)